Philosophical Debate
by Partly
Summary: Sam hated it when Dean got philosophical.


"Do you think we are the undead?"

Sam stared across at Dean, sure that he head that wrong. "What?"

"Do you think we qualify as being undead?" Dean sat at the other side of the table, a large tome open in front of him, a half-full glass of whisky off to the side. A nearly empty bottle sat next to it.

"Did you drink that whole bottle?"

Dean gave him a disgusted look. "It says here that the undead are," Dean read directly from the book, '_any creature who has died and has been reanimated through the use of supernatural forces_". He looked up and met Sam's eyes. "That's us, isn't it?"

"No. Well, yes, but not in that way. The undead are still dead but reanimated. You know… zombies, mummies, vampires."

Dean squinted his eyes and tilted his head at Sam in a way that Sam really hated. In the past, Dean's tact when forced into this kind of discussion was to just keep repeating his point over and over, usually with increasing sarcasm and bad temper. Lately though, he was putting more thought into his arguments – and often backed it up with something that he'd read in one of the many books found in the bunker. Sam was really beginning to regret every time he'd ever berated Dean for not reading enough.

"So, when I was a vampire, I was undead. Then, after I killed the son of a bitch that turned me and drank his blood, I was no longer undead. So that would make me what? Un-undead?"

"Dean, I don't think…"

Dean wasn't listening. "And when you were soulless, did that make you undead? Or doesn't the soul have anything to do with being dead. Or undead, as the case may be." He flipped through the book. "There's nothing in here that covers anything that happened to us. For all the crap that these Men of Letters put down in books, they didn't know squat. I mean, dead, undead, souls, hell and purgatory… You'd think that they'd have something to say about it all."

In fact, Sam was beginning to regret that Dean could read at all. He couldn't believe he was thinking it but there were times he missed the Dean that shot first and never thought about any of this. And the Dean that certainly didn't want to have a philosophical discussion based on it. "There are a lot of books we haven't looked at yet, Dean."

Dean slammed the book shut in front of him with a loud bang. "Whatever, dude. I'm hungry." He stood and walked toward that kitchen. "Do we have anything to eat?

Sam stared at Dean's retreating back. That was more like the Dean he knew. "Pretty sure that hunger is a good sign that you aren't the walking dead, there, Dean."

"I don't know," Dean's voice drifted back into the room. "When I was a vampire I was pretty damn hungry all the time. Hell, there was a time or two when even you looked tasty. Which was wrong on many levels.

Sam couldn't argue with that. "Is there a point to the whole undead question, Dean?

Dean came back stand in the door, open jar of peanut butter in his hand. "You look back on when we first started hunting. Dad… Dad always knew what the monsters were. You ask any hunter out there and they'll tell you that anything that was dead and then brought back by supernatural powers – that would make them a monster. And this," here Dean waved his hand around the room, "this whole damn bat-cave and the books in it were created by this super secret society that was supposed to have gathered all the information that ever was known about the supernatural, right?"

Sam nodded. He still didn't have any idea what Dean was driving at.

"And none of them – not Dad, not any hunter, not even the frickin' Men of Letters – none of them have any real idea of any of it. Not really. And all of them, every single one, would have us up against the wall if they had any idea of half the crap that happened to us."

"You could be right."

"Of course I'm right." Dean sounded offended that Sam would ever doubt him. "Here we are… I mean, we've been through more of this shit than anyone and yet, everyone we meet, treats us like we're idiots."

Sam almost pointed out that everyone _Dean_ met treated _him_ like an idiot, but then decided that it was best not to split hairs. "Still waiting for a point, Dean."

"That is my point," Dean said. "Everyone we meet – hunters, demons, angels, monsters – they're all so damn sure they know everything. Look at Henry. When we met him, look at how sure he was that all the knowledge anyone would ever need was carefully stored away in their precious secret society. In the end, though, we've got all of this," here Dean nodded to the rows of books, "and it can't even tell us if we're undead or not. And yet they all walk around thinking they know everything and that we know nothing."

"Well," Sam said somehow feeling that he was in the middle of a losing argument, "in all honesty, we often don't know anything."

"Maybe not," Dean shook the jar of peanut butter at Sam, "but at least we _know_ we don't know. That's gotta count for something." He grinned at Sam and then disappeared back into the kitchen.

Sam rubbed his head and tried to ignore his growing headache. Oh, yeah, he definitely preferred the non-philosophical Dean.


End file.
